


daphne, apollo

by NotAllThoseWhoWander



Category: Les Misérables (2012), Les Misérables - All Media Types, Les Misérables - Victor Hugo
Genre: Angst, Gen, Unrequited Love
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-07-09
Updated: 2013-07-08
Packaged: 2017-12-18 02:53:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,937
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/874829
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NotAllThoseWhoWander/pseuds/NotAllThoseWhoWander





	daphne, apollo

 

 

 

* * *

_"Ye who suffer because ye love, love yet more. To die of love, is to live in it"_

* * *

_  
_

_  
_They come out of the Musain at midday, jackets folded over their arms, walking quickly. It is warm, the sunlight impure, thin salty breeze coming off the river. Éponine watches him closely, the way his mouth moves in speech. His hair is uncombed; she finds herself wanting, irrationally, to run a brush through it, to make him sit in a chair beneath a low kitchen window while she trimmed the ends with rusty shears, the way that she had trimmed Gavroche's hair, a long time ago in another life.

 _Marius_. The name is sweet on her tongue, between her teeth—she will never call him  _Marius_ , not to his face; such an informality is almost unthinkable. Given names are for his  _amis_ , for his mother, for his lover, one day for his wife. The thought pains Éponine, becomes a sort of sick throb in her chest, and she feels all the more foolish.

They cross the Rue Saint-Jacques, speaking quickly with their heads together; there is some kind of disagreement. She watches Marius rake one hand through his hair, agitated, and Monsieur Enjolras shakes his head. They approach her vantage point, and pause in the shade of a striped awning, and snatches of conversation drift to her on the sun-warm air.

"You are wrong," Marius folds his arms, worn jacket pressed to his chest. "It's a terrible idea."

"The others disagree, and I am inclined to listen to them." Enjolras says, quick and brusque.  _He is so proud_ , Éponine thinks, not unbitterly. She remembers the first nights that Marius entered the Café Musain, dogging his handsome friend. He had had words with Enjolras that night, he told her once, standing in the chill of an autumn evening. He wouldn't have returned, if not for Enjolras's wisdom, some words imparted upon Marius, and suddenly he was going to the Musain almost every evening, and coming home late with ink on his hands, and speaking incessently of  _the Republic_ and  _the people_ and  _France, France, patria, patria_. 

"Joly agrees with me," Marius tilts his chin. "Although wherever the possibility of injury or malady exists, Joly is certain to take the negative view."

At this, Enjolras smiles. He touches Marius's shoulder, speaks to him quietly. Éponine does not hear the words pass between them, but sees the look. A brotherly look, she thinks. How stupid she is, to feel envy for a high-born revolutionary. 

They continue, nearing Éponine; full of conflict and silent rage and envy and love, she steps from the shadows, offers her smile only to Marius.

"Bonjour, Monsieur."

"Bonjour, Éponine." He smiles. Enjolras shifts his eyes away, looks at the pavement underfoot. 

 _Funny,_ she thinks,  _he is always looking down. Even when he isn't_.

"Tell me," she says. "How is your revolution going?"

"Slowly." Marius says, and pauses to listen to the bells of Notre Dame and Saint Sulpice, low and lonely. He gives a start, and a smile. "I must be off. Good day, Éponine."

She watches him hasten down the street, jacket-less. When she'd met him, he been wearing black for months. 

"He is going to see a woman," she says, aloud. "Or else to church."

Enjolras says nothing.

"Are you frightened of girls, Monsieur?" Éponine recognizes the brittle voice, cold and hard, as her own. "Even poor, dirty girls like myself?"

Enjolras looks up, very suddenly. His eyes are bright and sharp.

"Or does nothing frighten you?"

"Many things frighten me," Enjolras informs her, darkly. "Womankind is not one of them."

* * *

Azelma's coughs wake her in the night. Loud, hoarse, dry. Éponine stumbles in the dark to her sister's bed, presses the back of her hand to a sweat-soaked forehead.

"Zelma," she whispers, and hopes not to wake Gavroche. The boy has returned, for a night or maybe two, hair tangled and clothes ill-fitted and mismatched and stinking like soot and dirt, and Éponine can see that he is more a child of the streets than the brother she held in another lifetime.

"Ponine." Azelma shifts, restless, coughs again, a raw sound. Her eyes are shining but her skin is hot to the touch, and Éponine wakes Gavroche, sends him downstairs to the courtyard well.

"Bring water," she hisses. "Bring water."

And he goes, quick on pale bare feet, and brings back cupfulls of coppery water. Azelma drinks and coughs and tosses and writhes all night, until a pallid dawn breaks and Éponine, exhausted, falls asleep on the foot of her sister's pallet. She swings through a series of unsettled, unsettling dreams in which Marius, carrying a blood-red banner, chases her through winding backalleys and across high, narrow bridges. When she looks over her shoulder, he is carrying a gun, a long rifle with a wicked bayonet. He says  _I love you, I love you_ , but runs with the rifle held to his shoulder, ready to shoot. A red-jacketed figure swings from shadow, pulls her away. She wakes sweating and frightened, the dreams already half-forgotten.

The shared bedroom is small and ugly—mildewed blue wallpaper, low ceiling, the only furnishings a cot, pallet, and low nightstand. With Gavroche's help, Éponine moves Azelma to the bed, pulls the blanket up around her neck.

"Ponine," Azelma murmurs, through lips so dry they're cracked, "So hot, 'Ponine. I'm so hot."

Gavroche sits by her side, pale and silent. Éponine reads the worry on his face.

"It's bad, isn't it, 'Ponine?" 

"Not so bad," she says, but in the next hour Azelma is writhing and crying out, and Éponine knows that the fever dreams have come. She curses their parents for being absent and stupid and lazy and dishonest, and herself for being foolish and flighty and pissing away time chasing Monsieur Marius. She thinks  _it could be typhus_. She's been privy to swelling whispers on the street—children gone to bed with a racking cough, dying in the night.

"Gavroche, you must fetch a doctor."

The boy stares. "Where?"

"Go to the Rue de la Harpe." She realizes that her hands are trembling. "There is a saloon with a ship painted on the front window. A doctor lives next door. Tell him to come straight away."

Gavroche slips away, small and ragged in his too-big shirt and too-shoort breeches. Éponine holds Azelma's damp hand and sings to her, the old unforgotten songs of their childhood. Sweet songs, but full of sadness.

Some half-hour later, she hears footsteps on the stairs and Gavroche's boyish exclamations. The door is opened; a short, pallid, reedy man in an old top hat and long coat spills a shadow across Azelma's face.

"This is the girl?"

"Oui, monsieur." Éponine murmurs, rising. " _Elle est très malade, je sais_."

The doctor sets a black bag by the bed, examines Azelma swiftly. His face is heavily pockmarked. His shirt-collar is stained.

"Her fever is very bad. Without medical attention, I cannot be certain that she will survive to see tonight."

Éponine is breathless, hands tumbling over each other, hot and cold at once. "But you can cure her,  _monsieur_."

He turns. "For a price."

"Anything."

"I do not work for free. I need to be certain that I will be paid in full."

"You will be. You will be. My father, he has money set aside—I work, my brother, he—" the lies come so easily, spill from her lips quick and frantic. "We will pay."

And with the promise made, the doctor goes to work. Éponine does not understand the instruments removed from the case; a copper box, a knife, a tarnished silver bowl.

"What are you doing,  _monsieur_?"

"Bleeding her." The doctor looks at Gavroche, at Éponine. "You should both leave. There will be blood. The girl may faint."

"I'm staying." Éponine says. Gavroche lingers in the doorway. She watches him cut Azelma, watches the girl twitch and moan faintly as the knife goes in, watches the blood sluice from the cut, dark and thin. Her stomach lurches a little when Azelma's eyes roll in her head, but she swallows and refuses to look away.

It does not take long. Clouded daylight seeps through the windows, flat and gray. The doctor orders Gavroche to bring him water, washes his hands, plasters Azelma's wound. The girl lies pale and still on the cot, hands at her sides. Her dark hair fans across the pillow, tangled and frizzy and damp with sweat. 

"Well." The doctor packs his bag, rolls down his sleeves. "That's that." He looks at Gavroche. " _Garçon,_ stay with your sister. Girl, come with me."

She follows him down the dank, pungent stairwell, onto the quiet street. A cart rattles past, bearing stacks of wood and piles of slate.

"I look at that apartment, girl, and I have trouble believing that you have any money coming in."

"We have a little." She tilts her chin. "We make do."

"Jondrette, the urchin boy said. That's your name?"

She nods.

"No relation to the Jondrette who came begging by my home last week, I hope."

Éponine shakes her head. " _Non, monsieur, ce n'est pas—_ "

But the doctor moves swiftly, grabs her upper arm hard. 

"You filthy liar. I know your lot. I shouldn't have treated that bitch upstairs, do you understand? If not for the grace of God, I'd have left, and she'd have died."

Éponine yanks her arm away. "Don't touch me."

"I will be paid in full. By next week."

"And if we don't have the money by then?"

"I'll summon the police, won't I?"

"They won't jail me for being poor." She glowers, knowing well that she should be grateful.

"Then," and his hand finds her arm again, close to the shoulder. "You'll have to find another way to pay me."

His face comes close to hers, pockmarks and thin severe lips and crooked dark teeth. His breath is hot on the side of her face. "Tell me, girl—are you a virgin?"

She twists away, the movement violent. "Get away, you bastard, you sorry bastard!"

"You little cu—"

" _What_ is happening here?" A swift voice, a sudden scarlet movement. "Why are you worrying this girl?"

 _Enjolras_. Anger flashes deep and hot in Éponine's chest.

"It's nothing," she snaps. The doctor releases her.

"Nothing at all." He strides away, black bag swinging in his hand. Enjolras, dressed sharply in his red jacket and tie, turns to Éponine.

"That man was assaulting you,  _mademoiselle_."

"Do not call me that." She turns away, bristling. "I am nobody's 'miss',  _monsieur_ Enjolras."

"Than you must not call me ' _monsieur'_."

"Fine." She looks away from his jacket. The color, like blood, reminds her of a dream. She does not want to be reminded. "I expect that you will be going to the café Musain?"

" _C'est vrai_." He stares at her, as if seeing her for the first time. "You are shaking."

"I'm cold," she lies.

"Do you not have a coat?"

Éponine laughs, high and cold. "I am barefoot,  _monsieur_ ," (she spits the word) "and my brother's stomach is empty. Warm coats are the least of my worries."

She watches him swallow and shift, satisfied with his discomfort.

"You fight for the people,  _monsieur_ , but you are not one of us."

Éponine expects a retort, something cuttingly eloquent. But Enjolras is silent. She sees something like shame, or else guilt, in his eyes, but there is fire, too, and she turns before he can speak.

She leaves him alone on the pavement, with his good jacket and leather boots, and she goes upstairs with her stomach clawing at itself and her bare ankles aching. Defience keeps her warm.

* * *

 _  
_" _Excusez-moi, monsieur_!" She collides with the young man, a hurricane of long dark hair and tattered clothing. He stumbles sideways, nearly tripping over a florist's stall, and does not notice her clever hands in his pocket. "Apologies, apologies for my clumsiness."

" _C'est rien_." He straightens, tugs down his vest. Nods briskly, moves away through the square. The marketplace offers an unparalleled environment for petty thievery; just clamorous enough, a popular byway for university students, and mercifully light on lawmen.

Éponine ducks into the shadows of a brick edifice and sifts through the wallet, finding a few  _sous_ , a much-folded scrap of paper with an address and a time. She pockets the  _sous_ and drops the wallet.

Azelma has recovered, but barely. The girl is bedridden, breathes weakly and coughs often. It hurts Éponine.

She steps from the shadows.

So many targets—a group of university students, clad in woolen jackets, some young maids in mourning dresses, an old man in a silk top hat.

She goes for the university students. Steals up behind them, quiet in her bare feet. The warm pavement burns her heels.

One lags behind the rest, idling. Éponine realizes that he's writing in a notebook, head inclined. He doesn't notice the hand dart into his pocket, withdraw a leather billfold.

She pretends to pore over a fruit stall, examining the apples and pears until the farmer's wife tells her to buy something or move along. The students are drifting away, her blond victim following his fellows. Éponine waits until they've gone twenty paces, then jogs up behind them.

"Excuse me,  _monsieur_ _,_ you seem to have—"

The boy turns.

_Merde._

_  
_"Citizen Jondrette," Enjolras says, surprised. Éponine swallows a nasty retort.

"Here. You dropped this." She thrusts the billfold into his hands, brushing the dry skin of his palms.

"Thank you." Enjolras appears taken aback, accepts the billfold without counting the money.  _Either he's got so much money he wouldn't notice it missing, or he's too stupid to check_ , Éponine thinks. Probably the former. "I can only offer you some kind of monetary reward for returning this to me."

Of course. He was supposed to offer a reward, and Éponine would accept it after a moment of polite hesitation. Had it been anyone else— _anyone_ —she would have done so gleefully.

"No, thank you. Only doing my citizen's duty."

If he detects her sarcasm, he makes no comment.

"This means very much to me, Citizen Jondrette. More than you can know."

"How do you mean?" She doesn't mean to scowl.

Enjolras folds up the wallet. "My mother gave me this wallet before she died. It was a gift from her father, who bought it in England at the turn of the century. She said that I wouldn't be able to make my way in the world without a good leather billfold."

"How nice," Éponine says lightly. "It's a wonder, what money can do."

"I did not mean—"

She feels suddenly bad. "I'm sorry about your mother,  _monsieur_ Enjolras."

"I was a young man when she died." He pauses. "I would feel wrong to not reward you somehow." A flicker of a smile. "Even if you were only doing your citizen's duty."

"I don't want your money," she says, shortly, and does not apologize again. As she wheels and disappears into the throngs, she feels his gaze burning up her back.

* * *

So she steals. She is not proud of it. In the dim, flat heat of the evening she pickpockets mercilessly—her victims are drunks outside of saloons, couples walking arm-in-arm, too occupied with each other to notice her. As she pilfers their wallets, she thinks of herself and Marius. They, too, would walk with linked arms down broad boulevards, her entire world in his eyes, his smile. Thinking on it makes her angry. She reminds herself constantly that it is all for Azelma.

The young curly-haired drunk is an easy target, flirting with a busty prostitute outside a saloon near the Court of Miracles. Éponine steals up behind him, slips her hand down his breeches pocket. No money, but the man turns and grabs her arm.

"Hands off, _mademoiselle_ , unless you're planning to—" 

She withdraws her hand. "Not planning on anything."

He does not move his hand.  _Don't notice,_ she pleads with any god that might listen.  _Don't notice_.

"I know you," he says, slowly. "You're the girl always tailing Pontmercy."

"I don't know who that is."

"You should. You're always making moon-eyes at him."

The busty prostitute laughs loudly as she returns to the saloon.

"And I know you." Éponine snipes. "You're the drunken lout who follows Enjolras around like a kicked dog."

She expects Grantaire (R, to his friends) to snarl or lash out, but he laughs. A low laugh, bitter.

"You're right." He drinks wine, straight from the bottle. "Walk with me, little thief. You shouldn't be here."

"You shouldn't be telling me where to be."

"Right again." Another drink, longer. "Oh, well. Tell me, why do you steal?"

"Why do you drink?"

"Because I'm sad, little thief."

"Why?" She cannot fathom; here is this drunk, a university student with good clothes (a little worn, and stained, but good wool all the same), and friends with whom to drink and carouse. No doubt he has money—enough to buy wine and pay for school.

He looks down. His face is kind. Éponine has never looked at his face before, not up close. He has bright eyes, and a straight nose. 

"I love someone who doesn't love me back."

* * *

She doesn't need to ask.

"I'm sorry, _monsieur_."

"It's nothing." He sits on a brick stoop. Éponine follows suit. "I learned long ago that he would never love me."

"Why do you love him?"

Grantaire scoffs. "Aren't you shocked? I'm an abomination of nature. Man, woman—it's all the same to me."

"Nothing shocks me. And everything looks the same, in the dark."

"I like you, little thief." He pauses for a moment. "I love him because he loves, too. He loves greatly, with a passion to be admired by kings and presidents alike. A love like—burning, something that fuels you through the night, wakes you each morning. He loves, but he does not love me." Swigging the wine, Grantaire sighs quietly. "And why do you love Marius Pontmercy?"

Éponine hates to respond. "I don't want to talk about it, if it's all the same."

"I won't make you."

But something about his posture, the air of defeat hanging heavy around him...

"I am a thief,  _monsieur_ Grantaire, from a family of thieves. We are poor. You see my bare feet. I've gone hungry, and stolen bread to feed my brother and sister. When  _monsieur_ Marius—when we met, when he spoke to me—he saw through the..." she pauses, unelegently. "Through what most men see." _  
_

There follows a moment of silence. Grantaire drinks some more. It's a wonder the boy is alive, Éponine thinks darkly, if he drinks as much every night.

"I feel idiotic. I haven't told anyone about—this." 

"Don't," she says, and means it. "We don't chose who we fall in love with,  _monsieur_."

He laughs, low and hollow. "You're wiser than you look, little thief."

"Yes." Éponine looks down the dark street, south towards the river. "Yes, I am."

* * *

They catch up with her two days later, in a sunny square outside the university. She is caught red-handed, a stolen wallet in her hands, dirt under her fingernails, bare feet filthy and sore. 

"The devil do you think you're doing?" A huge hand descends on her upper arm, impossibly strong. Éponine flinches instinctively.

"Someone dropped it."

The officer snatches the wallet. "You must think me very stupid."

"Please,  _monsieur_ _—_ "

"Come along quietly."

" _Please, please!_ " She is begging like a wretch, does not care.

"Come along quietly. Keep that pretty mouth shut, and things will be much easier."

She spends two days in jail, hunched in the corner of a vast dim cell. There is straw on the floor, and meat stew twice a day. Bread, too. She eats too quickly, doesn't savor anything. Wakes in the night to find a hand under her skirts, down her blouse. In the moonlight, the outline of a sharp-nosed man. She grabs his hand and bites, hard, tasting blood.

Éponine is woken on a still, cool morning by a guard.

"Éponine Jondrette? Is there a Jondrette here?"

She scrambles to her feet. "Oui, ici." _  
_

"Someone's posted bail for you."

Her father stands beneath the stone portcullis, arms folded, glowering. He straightens when he sees the guard approach with Éponine.

"Bless you,  _monsieur_ , good sir. My stupid daughter—only a whore, really, but she may find the Lord God in time..."

"Unlikely." The guard snaps, shoving Éponine in her father's direction. They leave under flat cloudy skies. Outside the jail her father beats her, in the street, not caring who sees. Éponine follows him back to the flat.

"Sent to  _jail_? You ignorant  _slut_ , you stupid bastard whore." Azelma, still weak in bed, cries out softly but she is ignored.

 _  
_"And what was I jailed for? You did not know that Azelma was sick. You didn't care." She crosses the room and toes open the loose floorboard beneath her cot. Stares at the empty space. Rage blooms huge and hot in her chest, a dropped match, a wildfire. She turns.

"How do you think I paid your bail?" Thénardier's lips pull into a grimacing smirk. Éponine looses a wordless cry and throws herself at him, scratching with fingernails, feet lashing out in desperate kicks.

There is no sound, no single word or curse or phrase, nothing to put to her anger. Only kicks and punches and a slap across her father's face, feeling teeth and tongue, and then a hand in her hair. She is dragged downstairs, his fingers wrapped in the tangled locks. Her scalp feels like fire, but Éponine does not cry or beg mercy. When he throws her to the stoop, she is silent.

Then, there are only sensations.

A kick in the ribs, hard.

Toes in leather boots on her stomach, side, back.

Hand on her shirt collar. Pulled to her feet. Slapped face, stinging cheek. Another. Another. The tears burn. They do not fall.

* * *

He spits on her.

The cobbles are rough under her cheek. She waits for his inevitable pivot and return to the apartment before hauling herself to her feet, trembling, tasting blood on her tongue. Passerby stare.

Éponine's head rings, and she realizes with a sort of dull horror that her father had thrown her very hard against the pavement.

 _I must be strong—next time, I will be stronger_. She aches. She pulls herself down the street. Hears whispers lift, then fade. The  _rue_ returns to its business, nevermind the beaten gamine. There will always be another scarlet letter, another weeping girl, another punished whore. 

She makes it two blocks before collapsing. One moment there is the Musain, and promise, and monsieur Marius likely inside, and the next there is the world swinging around her on oiled hinges, and she is stumbling, groping for a hold, finding a brick wall. She sits down, hard, lips parting, the edges of her vision blurred with darkness.

_Damn. Damn, damn, damn, damn, damn._

_  
_Time passes. People step around her. Once, she thinks that she hears Marius calling her name, but the voice receeds and she is left alone with her darkness.

 _  
_"God," someone whispers, close to her ear. The sound of movement—someone bending beside her. "Éponine Jondrette."

"Marius." She turns her head. "Marius."

Silence. She is lifted, struggles. 

"Put me down, put me down, please."

She is ignored. Someone else's hair tickles her cheek; there are warm hands around her shoulder, beneath her thighs. She smells soap.

She thinks to protest, but her hands are around their neck, tight and grimy, and she lets the sweet full darkness take her.

 

 


End file.
